The challenge

With around 23 million customers traveling with Thomas Cook every year, it’s inevitable that some will have issues while on holiday. Addressing these quickly in resort is a sure recipe for improved customer experience.

Regrettably, that was something Thomas Cook was finding hard to achieve. Resort reps were insufficiently empowered, and communications and IT capabilities were lacking, meaning that a high proportion of customers returned home with outstanding issues that had to be escalated.

Such escalations, communication gaps and the difficulty compiling evidence to support compensation payments, led to significant delays, cost increases and poor customer experience.

“Probably the fastest process and systems improvement project we’ve seen in the business.” David Spickett, Head of Lean Capability, Thomas Cook, UK

The solution

To avoid lengthy internal IT delays, Thomas Cook’s lean team wanted a “business configurable” workflow system with which to streamline the complaints management process.

They selected the MATS Low-code platform due to its ease of use, flexibility and strong support for communications and mobile deployment. They only had two months to roll out a “test & learn” pilot to prove the solution during the off-season. So speed was a top priority.

The goal was to empower reps to resolve issues in resort much more quickly. That was the key to improving customer experience.

The results

Thomas Cook resolves issues faster to improve customer experience.

After just eight weeks, using one developer, Thomas Cook was ready to deploy a pilot-solution with colleagues in Lanzarote and customer relations. Enhancement suggestions were then implemented on the fly during a 90-day “test and learn” phase.

The system has now been deployed to over 90 resorts and the whole of the customer relations team, empowering up to 800 resort reps using tablets to log and resolve issues, and if appropriate, compensate customers. The new process is much faster for customers and more efficient for the company.